The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Lockhart, Caroline

  In his desperation he sometimes thought of appealing to his father. The amount he required was insignificant compared to what he knew his father’s yearly income must be. He doubted if even Harrah’s fortune was larger than the one represented by his father’s land and herds; but just as often as he thought of this way out just so often he realized that there were some things he could not do—not even for Helen Dunbar—not even to put his proposition through.

  That humiliation would be too much. To go back begging after all these years—no, no, he could not do it to save his life! He would meet the pay-roll with his own checks so long as he had a cent, and hope for the best until he knew there was no best.

  The end of his rope was painfully close the day Banule announced, after frequent testings, that they might start.

  During short intervals of pumping, Bruce had been able by ground-sluicing to work off a considerable area of top soil and now that the machinery was declared to be ready for a steady run he could set the scrapers at once in the red gravel streak that contained the “pay.”

  The final preparation before starting was to pour the mercury behind the riffles in the sluice-boxes. When it lay quivering and shining behind each block and bar Bruce felt that his gargantuan bread-crumb had been dragged almost to the goal. It was well, too, he told himself with indescribable relief, for, not only his money, but his courage, his nerves, were well-nigh gone.

  Bruce would trust no one but himself to pour the mercury in the boxes.

  “That looks like good lively ‘quick’,” Smaltz commented as he watched him at the task.

  “It should be; it was guaranteed never to have been used.” He added with a smile: “Let’s hope when we see it again it won’t be quite so lively.”

  “Looks like it orter be as thick as mush if you can run a few thousand yards of that there pay-streak over it.” There was a mocking look in Smaltz’s yellow-brown eyes which Bruce, stooping over, did not see. He only heard the hopeful words.

  “Oh, Smaltz—Smaltz—if it only is! Success means so much to me!” Unaccountably, such a tide of feeling rose within him that Bruce bared his heart to the man he did not like.

  Smaltz looked at him with a curious soberness.

  “Does it?” he responded after a pause.

  “And I’ve tried so hard.”

  “You’ve sure worked like a horse.” There was a look that was half pity, half grudging admiration on Smaltz’s impudent face.

  Banule was to run the power-house for the day and complete some work inside, so when Bruce had finished with the mercury he told Smaltz to telephone Banule from the pump-house that they were ready to start. Therefore while Bruce took his place at the lever on the donkey-engine enclosed in a temporary shed to protect the motor from rain and dust, Smaltz went to the pump-house as he was bid.

  When Banule answered his ring he shouted:

  “Let her go in about two minutes—two minutes—d’ye hear?” The telephone receiver was shaking in Smaltz’s hand and he was breathing hard.

  “Yes,” Banule answered irritably, “but don’t yell so in my ear.”

  Smaltz already had slammed the receiver back on the hook. With a swift movement he threw in the switch and jumped for the outside. He dropped from the high platform and fell among the rocks some ten feet below. Instantly he scrambled to his feet and crouching, dodging among the boulders that strewed the river bank, he ran at top speed until he reached the sluice-boxes. The carpenter came out from his shop to take a leisurely survey of the world and Smaltz threw himself flat until he had turned inside again.

  Then, still crouching, looking this way and that, watching the trail, he took a bottle from his pocket and pulling the cork with his teeth poured the contents over the mercury almost to the upper end of the first box. He went as far as he dared without being seen by Bruce inside the shed.

  The pumps had already started and the big head of water was coming with a rush down the steep grade, but Smaltz had done his evil work thoroughly for wherever the mercury laid thickest it glittered with iridescent drops of kerosene.

  He was thrusting the bottle back in his pocket, his tense expression relaxed, when he turned his head sharply at the sound of a crashing in the brush.

  “Toy!” Smaltz looked startled—scared.

  It was Toy, his skin a waxy yellow and his oblique eyes blazing with excitement and rage.

  “I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!” His voice was a shrill squawk. “I savvy you!” His fingers with their long, sharp nails were opening and shutting like claws.

  Smaltz knew that he had seen him from the hill and, watching, had understood. It was too late to run, useless to evade, so he stood waiting while shrieking, screeching at every step, the Chinaman came on.

  He flew at Smaltz’s face like a wild-cat, clawing, scratching, digging in his nails and screaming with every breath: “I savvy you! I savvy you!”

  Smaltz warded him off without striking, trying to get his hand over his mouth; but in vain, and the Chinaman kept up his shrill accusing cry, “I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!” There was little chance, however, of his being heard above the rush of the water through the sluice-boxes and the bumping and grinding together of the rocks and boulders that it carried down.

  Then Smaltz struck him. Toy fell among the rocks, sprawling backwards. He got to his feet and came back. Once more he clawed and clung and once more Smaltz knocked him down. A third time he returned.

  “You’re harder to kill nor a cat,” Smaltz grinned without malice, but he threw him violently against the sluice-box.

  Toy lost his balance, toppled, and went over backward, reaching out wildly to save himself as he fell. The water turned him over but he caught the edge of the box. His loose purple “jumper” of cotton and silk ballooned at the back as he swung by one hand in the on-rushing water, thick and yellow with sand, filled with the grinding boulders that came down as, though shot from a catapult, drowning completely his, agonized cry of “Bluce! Bluce!”

  It was only a second that he hung with his wild beseeching eyes on Smaltz’s scared face while his frail, old body acted as a wedge for the racing water and the rocks. Then he let go and turned over and over tumbling grotesquely in the wide sluice-box while the rocks pounded and ground him, beat him into insensibility. He shot over the tail-race into the river limp and unresisting, like a dead fish.

  * * *

  XXV

  The Clean-Up

  Toy’s disappearance was mysterious and complete. There was not a single clue to show which way he had gone, or how, or why. Only one thing seemed certain and that was that his departure was unpremeditated.

  His potatoes were in a bucket of water, peeled and ready for dinner; the bread he had set to raise was waiting to be kneaded; his pipe laid on the window sill while his hoarded trinkets for the little Sun Loon were still hidden under the pad of the bed in his tent. His fish-pole in its usual place disposed of the theory that he had fallen in the river, and although trained eyes followed every trail there was not a single telltale track. He had vanished as though he had gone straight up.

  His disappearance sobered the men. There was something uncanny about it; they lowered their voices When they speculated and all their latent superstition arose. Porcupine Jim declared that the place was “hoodooed” and as evidence enumerated the many accidents and delays. Bruce himself wondered if the malignant spirit of Slim was lingering on the river to harry him as he had in life.

  Smaltz was now in the power-house doing at last the specific work for which he had been hired. To all Bruce’s questions, he replied that the machinery there was “doing fine.” Down below, the pump-house motors were far from satisfactory, sparking and heating in a way that Bruce, who did not know the a, b, c’s of electricity, could see was not right. While the pumps and scrapers were working Banule dared not leave the motors alone.

  Then, after a couple of days’ unsatisfactory work, the water dropped so low in Big Squaw creek that there was only sufficient pr
essure to use one scraper. Bruce discharged all the crew save Smaltz, Banule, and Porcupine Jim, who labored in the kitchen—a living insult to the Brotherhood of Cooks. While Bruce, by running back and forth between the donkey-engine and the top sluice-box where the scraper dumped, managed to do the work of two men ten hours a day.

  His nerves were at a tension, for along with the strain of his responsibilities was the constant fear of a serious break-down. Banule made light of the sparking motors but the bearings were heating badly, daily necessitating more frequent stops. When a grounded wire sent the leaking current through the cable that pulled the scraper, and knocked Bruce flat, he was not convinced by Banule’s assurance that it “didn’t amount to much.” It was all evidence to Bruce that fundamentally something was wrong.

  But in spite of the time lost the cut was deepening and the side walls stood up so that every scraper that emptied into the sluice-boxes was from the pay-streak. Bruce fairly gloated over each cubic yard that he succeeded in getting in, for the sample pans showed that it was all he had hoped for, and more.

  If only the riffles were saving it and the tables catching the fine gold!

  This he could not know until the clean-up and he did not mean to stop until he had brought in the last load he dared before a freeze. So far the weather had been phenomenal, the exceptional open fall had been his one good piece of luck. Under usual weather conditions, to avoid cleaning up through the ice he would have been obliged to have shut down at least a month before.

  So the work kept on intermittently until an incredibly late date in November. The leaves of the poison oak had turned crimson, the tall tamaracks in the high mountains were gold, frost crystals glittered each morning on the planks and boards, but Big Squaw creek kept running steadily and the sunshine soon melted the skim ice that formed over night.

  By this time Bruce had a fresh worry. It kept him awake hour after hour at night. The mercury was not looking right where it showed behind the riffles. It was too lively. There was something in it, of course, but not enough to thicken it as he had hoped. He could see the flakes of gold sticking to it as though it had been sprinkled with Nepaul pepper but the activity of it where it showed in quantity alarmed him more than he would confess to himself.

  The change of weather came in the night. That day he started to clean-up. A chill wind was blowing from the east and the sky was dark with drab, low-hanging clouds when Bruce put on his hip-boots and began to take up riffles. A thin sheet of water flowed through the boxes, just sufficient to keep the sand and gravel moving down as he took up the riffles one at a time and recovered the mercury each had contained.

  Bruce’s feet and fingers grew numb working in the icy water with a scrubbing brush and a small scoop but they were no colder than the cold hand of Premonition that lay heavy upon him.

  Behind the riffles at the top of the first box the mercury was amalgam—all that he could have wished for—beyond that point it suddenly stopped and all that he recovered as he worked down looked to be as active as when he had poured it from the flask.

  What was wrong? He asked himself every conceivable question as he worked with aching hands and feet. Had he given the boxes too much grade? Had he washed too fast—crowded the dirt so that it had not had time to settle? Was it possible that after all the gold was too light and fine to save in paying quantities?

  Hope died hard and he tried to make himself believe that the lower boxes and the tables had caught it—that there was more in the mercury than there looked. But the tension as he took up riffle after rime with the one result was like watching a long-drawn-out race with all one’s possessions staked on the losing horse.

  He took up riffles until it was a physical impossibility to work longer in the numbing water, his fingers could not hold the scoop. Then he went to the pump-house and told Banule to telephone Smaltz to shut down.

  “He wants to know if you’ll be pumpin’ again?”

  “Yes, after awhile. Tell him to stay there. I’m going to squeeze out the ‘quick’ I’ve taken up, but I want to get as near finished to-day as I can. You come and help me.”

  As Bruce walked back to the sluice-boxes with bowed head he was thinking that the day was well suited to the ending of his roseate dreams. Failure is dull, drab, colorless, and in his heart he had little doubt that for some reason still to be explained, he had failed. Just how badly remained to be seen.

  Bruce had scooped the mercury into a clean granite kettle and now, while he held the four corners of a square of chamois skin, Banule poured mercury from the kettle into the centre of the skin until told to stop.

  “Looks like you ought to get several hundred dollars out of that,” Banule said hopefully as Bruce gathered the four corners, twisted them and began to squeeze.

  “Yes, looks like I ought to,” Bruce replied ironically.

  The quicksilver came through the pores of the skin in a shower of shining globules.

  Banule’s expression of lively interest in the process was gradually replaced by one of bewilderment as with every twist the contents kept squeezing through until it looked as though there would be no residue left. It was a shock even to Bruce, who was prepared for it, when he spread the chamois skin on a rock and looked at the ball of amalgam which it contained.

  Banule stared at it, open-mouthed.

  “What’s the matter? Where’s it gone? And out of all that dirt!”

  Bruce shook his head; his voice was barely audible:

  “I don’t know.” The sagging clouds were not heavier than his heart—“I wish I did.”

  Banule stood a moment in silent sympathy.

  “Guess you won’t work any more to-day,” he suggested.

  “Yes; tell Smaltz to start,” Bruce answered dully.

  “I’ve got to save the mercury anyhow.”

  Banule lingered.

  “Say,” he hesitated—obviously he found the confession embarrassing or else he hated to lay the final straw upon the camel’s back—“just before you told me to shut down, the motor on the small pump started sparkin’ pretty bad.”

  “Yes?” Bruce knew that if Banule admitted it was “pretty bad” it was bad indeed.

  “I’ll look it over if we can stop awhile.”

  Bruce shook his head.

  “There’s not an hour to lose. It’s going to storm; I must get done.”

  “I ’spose we can start.” Banule looked dubious. “I’ll try it, but I think we’ll have to quit.”

  Was there anything more that could happen? Bruce asked himself in dumb misery as he picked up his scoop and brush and mechanically went to work when the pumps started and the water came.

  His feet and hands were soon like ice but he was scarcely conscious of the pain for his heart-ache was so much greater. As he pursued the elusive quicksilver and worked the sand and gravel to the end of the box all he could see was the stack of receipted bills which the work and plant had cost, in shocking contrast to that tiny ball of amalgam lying in the chamois-skin on the rock. He had spent all of $40,000 and he doubted if he would take $20 from the entire clean-up as it now looked.

  How could he break the news to Helen Dunbar? Where would he find the courage to tell the unfriendly stockholders the exact truth? It was a foregone conclusion that they would consider him a fakir and a crook.

  It had to be done. As, in his imagination, he faced the ordeal he unconsciously straightened up.

  “Burt! Burt! come quick!” Banule was waving his arms frantically from the platform of the pump-house. There was desperation in his cry for help. He dashed back inside as soon as he saw Bruce jump out of the sluice-box. Before Bruce reached the pump-house he heard Banule ringing the telephone violently, and his frenzied shout:

  “Shut down, Smaltz! Shut down! Where are you? Can’t you hear? For God’s sake shut down, everything’s burnin’ up!”

  He was ringing as though he would have torn the box loose from the wall when Bruce reached the pump-house door. Bruce turned sick when he heard the
crackling of the burning motors and saw the electric flames.

  “Somethin’s happened in the power-house! I can’t ring him! He must have got a shock! Until I know what’s wrong, I don’t dare shut down for fear I’ll burn everything out up there!”

  “Keep her going!” Bruce bounded through the door and dropped from the platform. Then he threw off his hat as he always did when excited, and ran. And how he ran! With his fists clenched and his arms tight against his sides he ran as though the hip-boots were the seven-league boots of fable.

  In the stretch of deep sand he had to cross the weight was killing. The drag of the heavy boots seemed to pull his legs from their sockets but he did not slacken his pace. His breath was coming in gasps when he started up the steep trail which led from the sand over a high promontory. He clutched at bushes, rocks, anything to pull himself up and the pounding of his heart sounded to him like the chug of a steamboat, before he reached the top.

  The veins and arteries in his forehead and neck seemed bursting, as did his over-taxed lungs, when he started stumbling and sliding down the other side. It was not the distance he had covered which had so winded him, nor even the terrific pace, but the dragging weight of the hip-boots. They felt as though they were soled with lead.

  He imagined that he had crawled but as a matter of fact the distance would never be covered in the same space of time again.

  The perspiration was trickling from his hair and through his thick eyebrows when he reached the boat landing where ordinarily they crossed. He brushed it out of his eyes with the back of his sleeve and stared at the place where usually the boat rode. It was gone! Smaltz had taken it instead of the overhead tram in which he always crossed.

  There was no time to speculate as to Smaltz’s reason. He kept on running along the river until he came to the steps of the platform where the heavy iron cage, suspended from a cable, was tied to a tree. Bruce bounded up the steps two at a time and loosened the rope. It was not until then that he saw that the chain and sprocket, which made the crossing easy, were missing. This, too, was strange. There was no time for speculation. Could he cross in it hand over hand? For answer he put his knee on the edge and kicked off.